Radio NZ reports:

E tū members at media company Stuff are striking on Thursday afternoon. …

Wellington-based journalist and E tū delegate Tom Hunt said the company seemed to be showing contempt for staff.

“Stuff journalists have taken hit after hit to get Sinead Boucher’s companythrough hard times. We accepted no increases during Covid and effectively nothing last year, because we believed the company when it told us times were tough.

“To now be offered an insulting pay rise, and to see the company trying to split us into different collective agreements, is disgraceful. It shows they plan to keep screwing us for years to come.

That’s strong words. Stuff fires back:

“The statement from E tū contains a number of deliberate untruths. Since Covid, we have given our staff pay rises every year which are in line with the market, there has been no ‘secret payday’ and no one has been ‘screwed’. It is disappointing to see two journalists mischaracterise the issues in this manner.”

So Stuff is saying two of their own journalists are saying things that are untrue and are mischaracterising events. This is not a good way to sell the quality of your journalism!

Stuff reports:

Tamihere made the remark on Martyn Bradbury’s The Bradbury Group podcast this week. He said the Government had a “bully-boy mentality”, and said academics suggesting alternative economic opinions were “beat up”.

“This is worse than Nazi Germany, this is a fascist regime that has to be removed,” Tamihere said.

This is again not some random anonymous troll on the Internet. This is the party president of a parliamentary party saying that the government that got elected by a majority of voters is a fascist regime that is worse than a regime that murdered six million of its own citizens.

This shows again that Te Pati Maori is unfit for office. It is inevitable that repeated rhetoric like this from senior politicians will lead to violence. I mean if you actually did think the government was worse than Nazi Germany, then violence would be absolutely justified.

Martin Lally has done an analysis of some of the Covid statistics we all heard about, and I am publishing some extracts from it below with some comments from me.

One of the most dramatic piece of information in the early stages of the pandemic was the widely-cited figure of 80,000 deaths if we did not lockdown.  This came from Table 2 of Prof Shaun Hendy’s March 2020 paper, which provides a figure of 83,000 under a “No Control” situation.   

https://cpb-ap-se2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.auckland.ac.nz/dist/d/75/files/2017/01/Supression-and-Mitigation-New-Zealand-TPM-006.pdf

At the right hand end of the “No Control” row, the figure of 1.67% appears in brackets, which means the death rate and 1.67% of NZ’s population then (about 5 million) was 83,000.  Since the other rows of the table are control strategies by government, a reasonable interpretation of the phrase “No Control” by a person not acquainted with the technical details of the paper but fluent in English (such as a journalist) would be “no government controls”.  However, in a recent book (“The Covid Response”), Hendy explains that it actually meant no government imposed controls and people behaving “as if covid was just a regular flu”, i.e., people not reacting to the spread of covid (page 87).  The latter is inconceivable because a covid death toll reaching even a few thousand would have triggered people to take protective actions, especially with government and the media giving such attention to the matter.  At the time, I understood the 83,000 figure to be deaths if there were no government controls and no reaction by the populace, and therefore thought Hendy’s presentation of the figure without the crucial additional premise was a mistake.  It was rather like him predicting how many people would die in a tall building if it were hit in the upper floors by an aircraft and nobody reacted by vacating the building, with each person going about their work until the smoke and flames engulfed them or the top stories collapsed onto them.  In his recent book, Hendy could have just conceded that the omission of the additional premise led the media to draw the wrong conclusion, and therefore it was a mistake by him to fail to add the additional premise, but he doesn’t.  Instead, he blames the media for misunderstanding the figure (page 87).  It is rather like opening the floodgates and then blaming the water for obeying the law of gravity.

This is quite stunning. I suspect we all thought the 80,000 figure was based on no action by the government. But in fact it was based on the population acting like zombies and not making any personal behavioural changes.

Hendy (pages 123 and 146 of his book) expresses the widely-expressed view that the Maori and Pasifika communities suffered disproportionately from covid.  The plain English meaning of this claim is that the covid death rate for these two communities was higher than for the country in toto.  However, this is not true.  Ministry of Health data on the deaths from covid by ethnicity and age group are presented at the below weblink.  

https://www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/for-health-professionals/data-and-statistics/covid-19-data/covid-19-case-demographics#details-of-covid-19-deaths

The last table at this link reports 2,982 covid deaths to date, including 235 Maori and 131 Pasifika.  At the 2023 census, the population in toto was 4,994,000 including 887,000 Maori and 443,000 Pasifika: see Table 9 at

https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/2023-census-population-counts-by-ethnic-group-age-and-maori-descent-and-dwelling-counts

So the overall covid death rate was 0.06%, that for Maori was 0.026%, and that for Pasifika 0.03%.  So, overall Maori and Pasifika covid death rates were only half or less than the rate for the whole population.  The reason for this seems clear: most of the covid deaths were in the 80+ group and Maori and Pasifika had relatively low percentages of their populations in this 80+ group (1.1% for Maori and 0.9% for Pasifika versus 4.0% in the whole population).  By analogy, if covid death rates were particularly high in people with blue eyes, Maori and Pasifika would also suffer much less than proportionately.

Perhaps those who claim Maori and Pasifika suffered disproportionately actually mean that they suffered so within each age group rather than in toto.  However, even this is not true for Maori in the 80+ group (which contains over 70% of the total covid deaths).  In this 80+ group, there were 2,111 covid deaths including 88 Maori (data source as above).  In addition, the 80+ population in the 2023 census was 199,023 including 9,333 Maori (data source as above)  So, for this 80+ age group, the overall covid death rate was 1.06% versus 0.94% for Maori.  So, for this age group, the Maori rate is again below the overall rate. 

So it seems very clear that fewer Maori died proportionally than non-Maori.

Martin was interviewed on RCR about his analysis, which has links to all the papers.

Newsroom reports:

Van Velden ultimately chose the digital branding change. Although staff estimated this would require at least 50 hours of staff time and potentially the use of external consultants or resources, the minister told Newsroom she pushed back on that suggestion.

“I instructed the Department of Internal Affairs to change its branding and communications to English first to make it easier for New Zealanders to interact with the department. However, I also made it clear that I disagreed with the time and cost estimate, suggesting I could do this myself on Photoshop for near-zero cost,” van Velden said.

“The department agreed the cost could drop and I understand it has cost less than $1000, a significant time and cost saving compared to the original estimate.”

A spokesperson for the department confirmed to Newsroom the external cost of the change was $741 plus GST.

The Minister threatening to do the logo change herself via Photoshop was a brilliant move. The thought probably so horrified DIA that they dropped their plans for consultants etc and managed to change the logo for around $700.

The Herald reports:

Concerns are mounting among senior figures at Auckland Council over continued delays to appoint an investment manager for the city’s $1.3 billion Future Fund – with one councillor claiming the fund was missing out on $1m of growth every day.

Okay they are not missing out on $1m on growth a day. That is equal to a 28% annual return. There is no fund in NZ that gets anything close to that. The better funds can get 8% or so. Let’s say the Council is getting 3% from deposits, so they are missing out on maybe 5% which would be around $180,000 a day – still a useful amount.

Anyway the Taxpayers’ Union had the best solution for Auckland Council. It could be done almost instantly, would not need any consultants, and happen quickly. Ask the NZ Super Fund to manage the Auckland Future Fund for them. Why reinvent the wheel. The NZ Super Fund has demonstrated excellent returns over many years (and credit to Adrian Orr for his tenure there).

Stats NZ reports:

The gender pay gap was 5.2 percent in the June 2025 quarter, down from 8.2 percent in the June 2024 quarter, according to figures released by Stats NZ today. 

“The June 2025 quarter gender pay gap of 5.2 percent is the lowest since the series began in 1998,” labour market spokesperson Abby Johnston said.   

It is the lowest ever, and also the largest ever drop.

“Annually, the gender pay gap declined by 3.0 percentage points, the first statistically significant annual decline noted since 2017.” 

The pay gap under six years of Ardern and Hipkins declined 1.4% from 9.6% to 8.2%. This decline is twice as large as their entire six years.

No doubt the media will mainly ignore this data. If the gap had grown by 3% it would no doubt lead every news bulletin and be the subject of several weeks of columns.

Incidentally the gender pay gap is an interesting figure, but not that useful. It compares the median hourly earnings for men and women. So $33.76 for women and $35.62 for men which is a gap of 5.2%.

That doesn’t mean there is discrimination. It can reflect different occupational makeups for both gender. It can reflect women tend to have a longer absence from the labour market when children are young. It can reflect cultural differences in how assertive people are with pay negotiations. It may also have a discrimination factor, but you can’t tell from this data.

The more useful data is comparing within an industry, and adjusting for age and experience. For example do female 40 year old lawyers who have 17 years of experience get paid the same or less than male 40 year old lawyers with 17 years of experience. If the answer is yes, then discrimination is a more likely factor.

I suspect the gender pay gap will continue to decline, and may even end up with men on average being paid less than women. This is because so fewer men are going to university.

Stuff reports:

Labour’s Tāmaki Makaurau candidate stands by saying he’d repeal the gang patch law at an event on Wednesday night, despite the party’s deputy leader insisting he was “mistaken”.

Peeni Henare told RNZ he was asked his personal view on the issue, which was informed by his whānau experience, and understood that differed from his party’s view.

Henare is a senior Labour MP and is openly saying his party has the wrong policy.

So the official position of Labour seems to be they voted against the gang patch law, their MPs think it is a bad law that should be repealed, but their leader knows that would be unpopular so their policy is not to repeal it until they do coalition negotiations with the Greens who will demand it be repealed and Te Pati Maori who will probably want gang patches made mandatory!

James Kierstead at the NZ Initiative has done what hasn’t been done before, and looked at how many university students are getting As compared to the past. His findings show rampant grade inflation. Key findings:

• In the US the proportion of A grades has gone from 15% in 1940 to 45% a decade ago
• In England the proportion of degrees that are first class has gone from 7% in 1995 to 27% in 2019
• In NZ the proportion of A grades has grown from 22% in 2006 to 35% last year
• The largest increase was Lincoln that went from 15% As in 2010 to 39% As in 2024
• By discipline the largest increase was Arts and Humanities that went from 24% As to 40% As
• The smallest increases were Engineering (33% to 34%) and Law (17% to 21%)
• In 2020 49% of Auckland students got an A and 40% of Otago students

The reason for the grade inflation appears to be financial – the more students you have the more money the university gets, and failing too many students can drive numbers down. The same incentive applies at faculty level. Also an issue is courses with low pass rates can lost TEC funding.

There are some useful suggestions for how to reduce grade inflation in future, such as:

• List their rank or percentile in class as well as their grade (my old school reports would list my rank in every subject)
• Include the average mark on the report
• Include their distance from the mean in terms of standard deviations

Sadly I suspect no university will take up these suggestions.

The latest Term 2 attendance data is out. Term 2 can be the most useful as that can be tracked back to 2011. The other terms only track back to 2019.

So in the last three years the regular attendance rate has gone up 18 percentage points with all students and 17 percentage points with Māori students. In terms of percentage growth that is a 47% increase in the regular attendance rate for all students and a 62% increase for Maori students.

news.com.au reports:

Australia’s spy agency ASIO has found that Iran was responsible for a string of anti-semitic attacks in Australia in a bombshell finding that has prompted the expulsion of Iran’s ambassador.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made the shock announcement today flanked by AFP chief Reece Kershaw, ASIO boss Mike Burgess and Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

The anti-semitic campaign linked to Iran includes the attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne that occurred on December 6, 2024, when two masked men set fire to the building. 

The spy agency believes there are also links with the attacks on the Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Bondi, Sydney, which was damaged in firebombings in October last year.

These fire bombings were acts of terrorism, directed by a foreign power. The targets was Jews. If you firebomb a synagogue you are targeting Jews – not Israelis, not Zionists – just Jews.

If you firebomb a kosher cafe, again you are targeting Jews.

Iranian ambassador to Australia Ahmad Sadeghi was told just 30 minutes before the press conference that he – and three other officials – were being expelled from the country. 

The group – declared “persona non grata” – have seven days to leave. It also marks the first time since World War II that Australia has expelled a foreign ambassador.

This is a very big deal.

The IRGC will be listed as a terrorist organisation, with new laws set to be considered by federal parliament.

The question NZ media should ask our Government, is will they also list the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. Surely planning terrorist attacks on Jews in Australia qualifies.

ACT MP Karen Chhour released:

Responding to the Green Party’s “Open Letter to the Minister of Children”, ACT Children’s spokesperson Karen Chhour says:

“The Green Party’s new manifesto for children is revealing. In their list of seven duties of care, they relegate child protection to fifth.

“Meanwhile, they’ve put ‘whānau and whakapapa must be centred’ first on their list. They clearly do not understand, or care, that many young people’s trauma is from their whānau.

“This focus on ‘cultural safety’ over physical safety is typical of the Greens, and sadly it’s an ideology that crept into Oranga Tamariki under the previous Government. That’s part of the mess I’ve been left to clean up as Minister.

I agree that physical safety must always be the top priority.

Winston Peters announced:

Cabinet has formally agreed this week to the closure of the greyhound racing industry in New Zealand.

A bill will be drafted to bring this decision into law. The move follows last December’s announcement of the Government’s in-principle decision to end greyhound racing as of 31 July 2026.

The decision was made following ongoing concerns about animal welfare and three reviews of the industry (2013, 2017, 2021) which all outlined significant safety issues.

Cabinet also agreed in full to the recommendations contained in an interim report of the Ministerial Advisory Committee – set up to plan the transition away from greyhound racing

When this decision was first announced last year, I instinctively thought it was a good decision. Part of what convinced me is that Winston was backing it, as it is known he has been a racing industry advocate. But as I have been involved with some research in this area, I have been alarmed by many of the details I have learnt about this decision.

I still personally back the in principle decision on the grounds of animal welfare. So this post is not arguing against that. But the way it is being done, and the hypocrisy is something people should feel uncomfortable with.

Here’s four things you may not know.

1. While this will end greyhound racing in NZ, the Government will still allow the TAB to take bets from Kiwis on 46,000 greyhound races a year in Australia. Even worse they will pocket tax on that betting, and hand the profits from the gambling to the NZ horse racing industry. This helps explains why Winston is supporting it – this is a massive income boost for the horse racing industry. My view is that if greyhound racing is truly so terrible for greyhound welfare, then the government should not be making money by allowing betting on Australian races, let alone earning tax revenue from it.
2. The period between a law being passed to end greyhound racing and the proposed end date of 31 July 2026 could be as little as three months. That is outrageously short for the over 1,000 or so people who will lose their jobs and the many trainers who have to close down their entire operations.
3. The Government will not pay any compensation to organisations that have been operating a sport that has been legal for 150 years, and has invested huge amounts into infrastructure and training.
4. The Government is proposing to confiscate the assets of Greyhound Racing New Zealand (a private industry body) and transfer them to a new government entity

A principled approach to this issue would be:

1. Have the end date for greyhound racing to be say two years after the law change
2. Either ban all greyhound racing gambling, or have any proceeds from gambling on Australian races go to NZ animal welfare charities rather than the horse racing industry
3. Have a modest amount of funding for compensation and transition support to the 1,000+ people who will be losing their jobs solely due to a government law change
4. Don’t steal the assets of Greyhound Racing NZ.

I’ve been going through the latest achievement data for year 8 students in maths and writing. While it has stabilised, it still shows how badly change is needed. Here’s the data for year 8 students.

So as they finish primary and intermediate schools, only 1 in 4 students are at the level expected for maths. Shockingly 3 in 5 are more than a year behind.

For students at schools in low socio-economic areas only 1 in 12 are at the expected level in maths and 4 in 5 are more than a year behind.

However that doesn’t mean all is okay at the wealthier area schools. Only 1 in 3 of their students are at the level and almost 1 in 2 are a year behind.

Writing is little better.

Overall 1 in 4 at the level and 3 in 5 more than a year behind.

Of some interest is there is little difference between students at low and moderate socio-economic schools. There is an improvement in high areas, but still poor with 1 in 3 at the level and 1 in 2 more than a year behind.

Erica Stanford has announced:

“From Term 1 next year, a new Writing Acceleration Tool will be available to support 120,000 Years 6–8 students who are below expected writing levels and won’t have the benefit of structured literacy from Year 1. Teachers will be supported to deliver explicit teaching and will be able to monitor student progress in real time, adjusting how their teaching based on individual needs and responses to intervention.

“Every Intermediate and Secondary School will be funded to train their own structured literacy intervention teacher. This training will be tailored for older students and extends what is already available for those teaching in Years 0-6. As requested by the sector, teachers will gain the skills needed to work with small groups of students who need targeted support, using structured, evidence-based approaches.

Great to see the Minister focused on listing achievements while so many on the left are obsessed with trivia such as removing some te reo words from a few books designed to teach English.

When random trolls on Twitter compared the Ardern Government to the Nazis there were numerous articles decrying such language. Now we have a senior Labour frontbencher saying in a televised debate that the NZ Government is worse than Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin etc and will any media be demanding Chris Hipkins censure his MP for such an insane statement?

Chris Penk announced:

“Right now, councils are hesitant to sign off on building consents and inspections because they could be held liable for all defects, leaving ratepayers to foot the bill.

“This often happens when one of the parties responsible cannot pay for repairs, for example, if a business goes bust.

“Currently, building owners can claim full compensation from any responsible party – and it’s often councils, with the deepest pockets and no option to walk away, that end up paying out.

“The risk-aversion this creates leads to frustrating delays and extra cost for builders and homeowners.

This is definitely a big issue. I recall when I was a parliamentary staffer working on the leaky homes issue. We got told that almost inevitably councils end up paying the most because they are the last one standing.

The council (ie ratepayers) may only be responsible for 5% of the problem but they end up with 100% of the liability.

“The Government will scrap the current framework, known as joint and several liability, and replace it with proportionate liability.

“Under this new model, each party will only be responsible for the share of work they carried out.

“Building owners will be protected if things go wrong and we’re exploring options such as requiring professional indemnity insurance and home warranties, similar to arrangements in Australia.

This seems a very worthwhile change, as does the potential requirement for indemnity insurance.

“The second major change I am announcing will allow councils to voluntarily consolidate their Building Consent Authorities (BCAs) functions with each other.

“It is ridiculous builders, designers and homeowners must navigate 66 different interpretations of the Building Code, because of the number of council BCAs across the country.

“Builders can be rejected on paperwork that would be accepted by a neighbouring authority simply because each BCA applies the rules differently.

“Many councils have asked for this and I expect they will seize the opportunity to consolidate, share resources like building inspectors and IT systems, and pass the savings on to ratepayers.

Also a good change. The Wellington councils could lead the way and set up one consent authority for the region. Wellingtonians often look to buy or build across the region – whether it be in Wellington proper, the Hutt or Porirua.

In August each year I receive a large raw data-set from the Ministry of Education – and process it into a highly informative and useful form for schools, families, politicians and other education interested entities.

This data set is of all of the LEAVERS for every school each year and is far more important/definitive than those that schools put out in February as that only covers the students per year group.

In a time of great proposed change in our education system, being fully informed on the state-of-play is essential.

One aspect that seems clear from the data is the place of students feeling that they belong to a form of wider collective – as well as having individual aims. Wealth is clearly an advantageous aspect for many of the top performing schools but there are others – e.g. doing well as “young women”, having faith/purpose based foundations, having cultural belonging.

This is the top 20 schools, by % of students gaining University Entrance for Leavers in 2024

Manukau Christian School
Diocesan School for Girls
St Cuthbert’s College
Rangi Ruru Girls’ School
Iona College
Pinehurst School
Kristin School
Craighead Diocesan School
Baradene College
ACG Parnell College
Marist College
Saint Kentigern College
Woodford House
St Mary’s College (Ponsonby)
St Oran’s College
King’s College
Christchurch Adventist School
Columba College
Waikato Diocesan School For Girls
Wellington Girls’ College

The apparent advantage of the faith, purpose and culture does not stop with that group either. If you break the set of 430+ schools into 10ths based on the Equity Index Numbers (which replaced “deciles”) the top schools in those divisions are:

1st 10th: Manukau Christian School
2nd 10th: Iona College
3rd 10th: Liston College
4th 10th: Christchurch Adventist College
5th 10th: Zayed College for Girls
6th 10th: Southland Girls High School
7th 10th: Auckland Girls Grammar School
8th 10th: Manukura
9th 10th: TKKM of Hokianga
10th 10th: Te Wharekura o Te Kaokaoroa o Patetere

NB: The first 10th are the lowest EQI numbers – having, according to govt. data, the least “at risk students”.

I have the full data set – showing the NZ School LEAVERS’ outcomes for 2024 – available now.

For every high school the process looks at in ranked order (including their Equity Index Number – which replaced “deciles”)
– School size
– NCEA Level 2 and 3 for Leavers (for all schools)
– University Entrance (UE) for Leavers (for all schools)
– The gap between L3 and UE (for all schools)
– The gaps – by school and aggregate – between ethnicities.
– Retention until 17 years of age (for all schools)
– Progression to Degree Level study (for all schools)
– Data split between the EQI 10ths (for all schools)
– Data that shows which schools are thriving above their demographics
– Case study data on the Super 8 Boys’ Schools and the 13 Boys’ Schools in the South Island seeking improvement
– System wide data gender, ethnicity, etc.

(NB: The UE statistics include equivalents for Cambridge and IB).

For those who would like the data set please email me: [email protected]

• if it is for personal use – a donation is appreciated.
• if it is for professional/business/school use – the costs is $350 (plus GST) I will send the data set with an invoice.

The Herald has a story about how someone with indecency convictions passed registation as a teacher, seemingly due to the Clean Slate Act. The timeline is:

• 2002: Convicted of three counts of committing an indecent act.
• 2004: Clean Slate Act passed
• 2011: Registered as a teacher, passed police vetting, did not disclose convictions
• 2014: Failed police vetting – they advised he not have unsupervised access to children, young people or vulnerable members of society. Certificate not renewed
• 2015: Passed police vetting
• 2016: Teachers’ Council renewed certificate
• 2017: Passed police vetting, Teachers’ Council renewed certificate.
• 2021: Censured by a teachers disciplinary tribunal in for misconduct in 2017, including making a sexual hand gesture to students, but was not required to inform his employer of the findings
• Aug 25: Jailed for four years and five months for indecently touching young girls at a private after-school tutoring company, and making objectionable child abuse material.

There appear to be several failures here.

1. Why did the Police flag him in 2014, but not in 2011, 2015 or 2017? Did they interpret the Clean Slate Act correctly?
2. Why did the Teachers Council register him in 2017 despite having been told in 2014 he should not [edit] have unsupervised access to children. Did they ask any questions about this?
3. Why did the tribunal in 2021 not require him to inform his employer?

The combination of these led to him abusing nine girls. This was preventable.

Jenee Tibshraeny writes:

Five years on from the onset of the pandemic, it is becoming clear the Government’s finances are suffering from long Covid – not just a Covid hangover.

Many Kiwis have taken their medicine – stomached high interest rates and faced job cuts, as the Reserve Bank has curbed inflation and the Government removed pandemic-era spending initiatives.

But still, the Government’s books are not back in shape.

In fact, its debt position is expected to continue deteriorating before it improves.

Treasury is warning the books are in a “structural” deficit.

Spending is at a fundamentally unsustainable level, even once you strip out the ups and downs associated with different parts of the economic cycle.

The reckless spending by the Ardern/Hipkins Government has left the country in a terrible place to be. Rather than temporarily increase spending to help cushion the Covid shock, they permanently increased spending across the board.

In 2017 Labour and Greens promised to hold core crown spending to under 30% of GDP. In 2016/17 it was 28.5% of GDP. They said they would increase it – at most – to 30% – a 1.5% increase.

They left it at 33.6% of GDP for 2023/24. Instead of increasing it by no more than 1.5% of GDP, they increased it by 5.1% of GDP – more than three times as much.

This makes more sense in terms of actual spending. So here is what it means in June 24 dollars:

• Ardern/Hipkins inherited spending of $118 billion
• Ardern/Hipkins promised that spending would not go beyond $124 billion
• Ardern/Hipkins left spending of $139 billion

That extra $15 billion a year is why we have a structural deficit. It has nothing to do with Covid-19 – that should have been temporary spending.

The last time spending was this high a proportion of the economy was in 2011, when we had the Canterbury earthquakes. The difference is that while spending spiked up to around 35% of GDP, it then dropped back down again in the years afterwards. Labour didn’t drop it back down. They used the Covid-19 crisis to increase spending on all sorts of non-covid activities.

Lloyd Burr writes:

Will he look into getting rid of seatbelts in cars? What about aircraft safety briefings? We ask how far is too far for the Regulation Minister’s red tape crusade.

A lot of people seem to have got outraged that David Seymour even asked for advice on the issue of compulsory cycle helmets for cyclists. I think it is a good thing to have a Minister who will ask for evidence about whether something is actually providing more benefits than costs.

In London, people can wander up to a ‘Boris Bike’ rack, hire one and cycle around the city without having to worry about wearing a helmet.

When you’re done, you park it up at another rack and you’re good to go. It’s a similar system in New York and Los Angeles. In the Netherlands, it’s like this but on steroids. There are special bike highways and massive bike parking lots.

Helmets aren’t mandatory in those places – so why are they mandatory in New Zealand? This was a question a staff member of Regulation Minister David Seymour’s asked, and so the ministry looked into it.

As Burr helpfully points out there are lots of places where helmets are not compulsory, so looking at the issue is worthwhile.

“The long and the short of it is, there are a lot of countries where they don’t require you to have a helmet, but they also seem to have cities that are more set up for cycling,” Seymour says.

“London is better set up for cycling. They have slower traffic, more cycle lanes and so on. I would argue having a helmet law and still being able to share the road and drive at a decent speed is probably better for New Zealand,” he says.

That’s a useful thing to know. If you wanted to do away with compulsory helmets, you would need to have slower speed limits.

The argument in favour of not making them compulsory is that doing so discourages cycling (which is healthy for people) and more people would cycle if they were not compulsory.

Interestingly for Seymour, Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick – a person often dubbed his political nemesis – supported calls to scrap the helmet law in 2016 when she ran for the Auckland mayoralty.

No courage when she suggested it of course.

What about airline safety videos? It’s mandatory to watch them even if you’ve watched them hundreds of times.

“There should be a test. If you can pass the test, you never have to watch another one,” he says jokingly (we assume).

“The torture of continually having to watch it would be enough to motivate people to pass the test. It’d be better than anything NCEA has ever thrown up.”

That’s a great idea. I would happily sit a test to avoid having to pay attention to the same video as I have heard 500 or so times before.

Erica Stanford made the pretty obvious decision that books designed to teach kids English should use English words, and the usual suspects are claiming it is everything from white supremacy to cultural genocide. I don;’t think they realise that when they scream that at every issue every week, it becomes meaningless.

Anyway Sir Ian Taylor has a useful explanation which is below.

Basically he points out that these are specialised books called coding books, and coding books are designed to teach only one language. There will be lots of other school books that include te reo, but not coding books.

UPDATE: Sir Ian has now done a column in Stuff which expands in more details:

As I discovered, decodable books are specialist books designed to help children crack the code of reading. They turn letters into sounds, blend those sounds into words, and build the foundations of literacy.

More importantly, by international best practice, decodable books are written in a single language. That’s the way they work everywhere in the world.

French decodables are in French. German in German. Spanish in Spanish. And, by extension, back here in Aotearoa, Māori decodables are in Māori. …

So, what’s the difference between decodable books and reading books?

A quick search revealed that reading books are designed to develop comprehension, imagination, and enjoyment. There is no rule that says they must be in a single language. These are the books my 5-year-old moko will soon move to, after she finishes the decodable books she currently thrives on.

So there will still be hundreds or even thousands of reading books in schools that have both English and te reo words in them. It is just the English decodable books that will in English just as the te reo decodable books will be in Maori.